“Boys been coming in?” asked Irons.
“It may be that,” said Stillford, smiling as he arranged the prickly defences to the best advantage.
The Grange expedition to church had to confess to having seen nothing of the Castle party – and in so far it was dubbed a failure. There was indeed a decorous row of servants in the household seat, but the square oaken pew in the chancel, with its brass rods and red curtains in front, and its fireplace at the back, stood empty. The two men reported having met, as they walked home through Scarsmoor, a very large fat man with a face which they described variously, one likening it to the sinking sun on a misty day, the other to a copper saucepan.
“Not Lord Lynborough, I do trust!” shuddered little Violet Dufaure. She and Miss Gilletson had driven home by the road, regaining the Grange by the south gate and the main drive.
Stillford was by the Marchesa. He spoke to her softly, covered by the general conversation. “You might have told us to take a key!” he said reproachfully. “That gorse is very dangerous to a man’s Sunday clothes.”
“It looks – businesslike, doesn’t it?” she smiled.
“Oh, uncommon! When did you have it done?”
“The day before yesterday. I wanted there to be no mistake from the very first. That’s the best way to prevent any unpleasantness.”
“Possibly.” Stillford sounded doubtful. “Going to have a notice-board, Marchesa?”
“He will hardly make that necessary, will he?”
“Well, I told you that in my judgment your right to shut it against him is very doubtful.”
“You told me a lot of things I didn’t understand,” she retorted rather pettishly.
He shrugged his shoulders with a laugh. No good lay in anticipating trouble. Lord Lynborough might take no notice.
In the afternoon the Marchesa’s guests played golf on a rather makeshift nine-hole course laid out in the meadows. Miss Gilletson slept. The Marchesa herself mounted the top of Sandy Nab, and reviewed her situation. The Colonel would doubtless have liked to accompany her, but he was not thereto invited.
Helena Vittoria Maria Antonia, Marchesa di San Servolo, was now in her twenty-fourth year. Born of an Italian father and an English mother, she had bestowed her hand on her paternal country, but her heart remained in her mother’s. The Marchese took her as his second wife and his last pecuniary resource; in both capacities she soothed his declining years. Happily for her – and not unhappily for the world at large – these were few. He had not time to absorb her youth or to spend more than a small portion of her inheritance. She was left a widow – stepmother of adult Italian offspring – owner for life of an Apennine fortress. She liked the fortress much, but disliked the stepchildren (the youngest was of her own age) more. England – her mother’s home – presented itself in the light of a refuge. In short, she had grave doubts about ever returning to Italy.
Nab Grange was in the market. Ancestrally a possession of the Caverlys (for centuries a noble but unennobled family in those parts), it had served for the family’s dower house, till a bad race-meeting had induced the squire of the day to sell it to a Mr Cross of Leeds. The Crosses held it for seventy years. Then the executors of the last Cross sold it to the Marchesa. This final transaction happened a year before Lynborough came home. The “Beach Path” had, as above recorded, been closed only for two days.
The path was not just now in the Marchesa’s thoughts. Nothing very definite was. Rather, as her eyes ranged from moor to sea, from the splendid uniformity of the unclouded sky to the ravishing variety of many-tinted earth, from the green of the Grange meadows (the one spot of rich emerald on the near coastline, owing its hues to Sandy Nab’s kindly shelter) to the grey mass of Scarsmoor Castle – there was in her heart that great mixture of content and longing that youth and – (what put bluntly amounts to) – a fine day are apt to raise. And youth allied with beauty becomes self-assertive, a claimant against the world, a plaintiff against facts before High Heaven’s tribunal. The Marchesa was infinitely delighted with Nab Grange – graciously content with Nature – not ill-pleased with herself – but, in fine, somewhat discontented with her company. That was herself? Not precisely, though, at the moment, objectively. She was wondering whether her house party was all that her youth and her beauty – to say nothing of her past endurance of the Marchesa – entitled her to claim and to enjoy.
Then suddenly across her vision, cutting the skyline, seeming to divide for a moment heaven above from earth beneath, passed a tall meagre figure, and a head of lines clean as if etched by a master’s needle. The profile stood as carved in fine ivory; glints of colour flashed from hair and beard. The man softly sang a love song as he walked – but he never looked towards the Marchesa.
She sat up suddenly. “Could that be Lord Lynborough?” she thought – and smiled.
CHAPTER III
OF LAW AND NATURAL RIGHTS
LYNBOROUGH sat on the terrace which ran along the front of the Castle and looked down, over Nab Grange, to the sea. With him were Leonard Stabb and Roger Wilbraham. The latter was a rather short, slight man of dark complexion; although a light weight he was very wiry and a fine boxer. His intellectual gifts corresponded well with his physical equipment; an acute ready mind was apt to deal with everyday problems and pressing necessities; it had little turn either for speculation or for fancy. He had dreams neither about the past, like Stabb, nor about present things, like Lynborough. His was, in a word, the practical spirit, and Lynborough could not have chosen a better right-hand man.
They were all smoking; a silence had rested long over the party. At last Lynborough spoke.
“There’s always,” he said, “something seductive in looking at a house when you know nothing about the people who live in it.”
“But I know a good deal about them,” Wilbraham interposed with a laugh. “Coltson’s been pumping all the village, and I’ve had the benefit of it.” Coltson was Lynborough’s own man, an old soldier who had been with him nearly fifteen years and had accompanied him on all his travels and excursions.
Lynborough paid no heed; he was not the man to be put off his reflections by intrusive facts.
“The blank wall of a strange house is like the old green curtain at the theatre. It may rise for you any moment and show you – what? Now what is there at Nab Grange?”
“A lot of country bumpkins, I expect,” growled Stabb.
“No, no,” Wilbraham protested. “I’ll tell you, if you like – ”
“What’s there?” Lynborough pursued. “I don’t know. You don’t know – no, you don’t, Roger, and you probably wouldn’t even if you were inside. But I like not knowing – I don’t want to know. We won’t visit at the Grange, I think. We will just idealise it, Cromlech.” He cast his queer elusive smile at his friend.
“Bosh!” said Stabb. “There’s sure to be a woman there – and I’ll be bound she’ll call on you!”
“She’ll call on me? Why?”
“Because you’re a lord,” said Stabb, scorning any more personal form of flattery.
“That fortuitous circumstance should, in my judgment, rather afford me protection.”
“If you come to that, she’s somebody herself.” Wilbraham’s knowledge would bubble out,